Tuesday, April 21, 2015

This flower bouquet was originally designed by my daughter for a wedding in a nearby town. She operates a flower design company Stems & Things. I painted this arrangement with students in my painting class. We simplified the flower shapes and leaves to create the final painting. Watercolor is a great medium to paint flowers with. It is fun to paint the flowers with lost & found edges. I like to overlap flowers to show dimension. The flowers are white and orange ranunculus, pink garden roses, white rice balls and lavender. The greenery is bay leaves and eucalyptus leaves. I changed the vase from the original image because I wanted to show how stems appear to change direction when submerged into the water.

Friday, April 3, 2015

This week I painted with the Plein Air Colony of Pinellas at Galatea Garden in South Pasadena near the St. Petersburg, FL area. This was a small well manicured park with large garden urns full of flowers. A great subject to paint with watercolors in the morning light. The sunlight cast lively purple shadows across ground and created soft form shadows around the garden pots. In the park there is a wonderful sculpture of Galatea; an ancient Greek myth about a statue that came to life. I met a few other artist and painted with them in the park. There is also a small lily pond with a fountain which is the home to a few rather large bull frogs. They provided a delightful serenade as I painted into the afternoon warmth.